User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation

Andyrids said:

After reading through pages and pages of posts on here, Am I correct in assuming that there is no bulletproof way to prevent this annoying behavior ? (or have I missed something)

We clearly have a very different definition for word "annoying". I have hidden the original Users and ProgramData folders on C: on all Windows Seven machines I have and never see, not even periodically check these folders. They sit there, almost useless but yet needed, doing no harm, taking a few bits or so space, never seen by me, never disturbing me.

Let the folders be there.

Kari

Your computer, your risk. You do of course whatever you want to.

I have to try to think not only you but also possible future readers of this thread, not giving information which might later cause issues, so I will just say this: Although both Users and ProgramData are relocated to another drive using this method, some programs need to find them also in their original location. If these two additional folders which never get bigger than a few bits really disturb you, hide them and forget. If you can't forget them I think it's better you reinstall and this time forget the relocation so you don't get these two tiny additional folders.

Kari

Today we got sad news, one of our own, a senior member and outstanding geek Gary (Britton30) passed away yesterday evening.

Gary was seen here at the forums till the end, he was actively helping other members and visitors alike as late as 20 hours ago, about 9 PM his time. It tells something about his passion that he received the respected Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award last week, the 1st of July, for his work here. Today we got the news, he passed away late yesterday evening.

I owe a lot to Gary. He became a Sysprep guru, for instance in this tutorial thread he posted over 100 times, always politely assisting other geeks and telling about his findings and experiences. If you want to say Good Bye to Gary you can do it here. This post is simply my personal Thank You to a good virtual friend.

Thank you Gary for helping me in this and other Sysprep threads.

Your virtual friend from the other side of the world,

Kari

I'm truly sorry to hear someone has passed. From what I've read he was a great person, and extremely helpful to all who needed it. No doubt he will be sorely missed, and I hope he is at rest.

Though I don't want to seem like I don't care, I do have a bit of a problem.

I've been trying to use the information on the 22nd post where you're supposed to go into command prompt and type in: C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe /audit /reboot

A small window popped up, stating "Processing clean up phase Sysprep plugins..."

But then a few moments later I received this error:

"A fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine."

I looked up solutions on how to fix this. Checked the registry and made sure GeneralizationState was set to 7. Then I tried msdtc -uninstall and then msdtc -install. Neither solutions worked.

I've never used sysprep before and I'm not even sure what I'm doing. I got a new hard drive, and wanted to transfer my user profile and program files to it since the hard drive with Windows on it is only 40 gigs. Thus why I'm here and trying this Sysprep option.

I'm currently running Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit Edition on a Gateway laptop. The Windows install is relatively new - about 4 days old (My old hard drive died on me so I had to replace it with something else quickly, and all I had was that 40 gig at the time).

Any help would be appreciated. I really would rather not have to reinstall everything again.

Edit: I just tried the IE10 fix, even though I currently have IE11. I tried to change the values but it kept throwing me an "Error while trying to write the new value's contents". I'm definitely opening regedit as admin, so I'm not sure what's going on.

Soul3 mate I am no expert Kari will answer I suspect as soon as he sees this but if you are just copying the small drive to the larger one why not just clone it? with Macrium.

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download and then work on it??

Soul3chelon said:

I've been trying to use the information on the 22nd post where you're supposed to go into command prompt and type in: C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe /audit /reboot

A small window popped up, stating "Processing clean up phase Sysprep plugins..."

But then a few moments later I received this error:

"A fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine."

I looked up solutions on how to fix this. Checked the registry and made sure GeneralizationState was set to 7. Then I tried msdtc -uninstall and then msdtc -install. Neither solutions worked.

Hi Soul3chelon, welcome to the Seven Forums.

The culprit is most probably the Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service (WMPNetworkSvc). When it's running, Sysprep always fails.

Stop the said service first by giving this command in administrative Command Prompt:

Code:

net stop WMPNetworkSvc

Now run the Sysprep, it should work this time.

Whatever you do, do not forget to backup your system first, at least your personal files and folders. also do not forget this warning:

   Warning

Using this method causes Windows 7 to lose activation information, and it needs to be reactivated afterwards. If your Windows 7 is an OEM version, you might not be able to reactivate it, at least not without phone activation option.

ICit2lol said:

Soul3 mate I am no expert Kari will answer I suspect as soon as he sees this but if you are just copying the small drive to the larger one why not just clone it? with Macrium.

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download and then work on it??

In this case this is not a solution to OP's issue; OP is not trying to clone the smaller disk but instead free the space in it by moving the main profile folder Users with all its subfolders (user profiles) to the new bigger disk, keeping already installed Windows running on the original smaller disk.

Kari